All the Paths of Shadow (25 page)

Down the hall and through the palace, the whistle was repeated, fainter and fainter each time until it was gone.

Meralda leaped from the stair. Fromarch saw her, and beckoned her in. “Those Alon bumblers are inside,” he said. “Better have a look.” He turned and hurried away.

Tervis rushed to Meralda’s side and wordlessly took Mug’s sheet-draped bird cage. Meralda let go, and sprinted for the doors.

“Go on, follow her!” said Mug. “I can take a bit of swinging. Run, blast you, run!”

Tervis hurried after, bird cage held high, as eyes poked and thrust their way through folds in the bed sheet.

Meralda ran. The mirror stood by her desk, in what should have been plain sight from the doors. But Shingvere stood before the glass, and his rotund form blocked any view.

“Stand aside!” shouted Fromarch, slowing to a halt. “We can’t see through your thick Eryan bottom!”

Meralda followed. One whistle meant stand alert, Meralda recalled. She wondered if the captain had actually given orders that Tirlish guards were to enter the Alon wing on the traditional three-whistle “fire, foes, fie” signal.

If so, Tirlin was only two whistle blows from war.

Meralda gently moved Shingvere away from the mirror.

There, in the glass, was the safe room, dark no more. In the room, Red Mawb and Dorn Mukirk stood before Tim’s portrait, locked in a silent round of red-faced hand waving and finger pointing.

“Off to a good start,” muttered Mug, as Tervis placed his pot on the edge of Meralda’s desk.

Meralda’s jaw dropped. In one hand, Mawb held a human skull, from which the lower jaw and most of the upper teeth were missing. The skull twitched and spun in Mawb’s hand, as though moving erratically on its own. Indeed, after one particularly violent sideways jerk Mawb slapped the boney face with his free hand.

A ruddy, smoking flame rode the air a hand’s breadth above Mawb’s bald head. Mawb’s robe, like Mukirk’s, was festooned with a variety of symbols, some of which Meralda recognized as numbers and Old Kingdom astrological markings.

“Give ’em a wagon and a tent and we’ll have a bloody circus,” muttered Mug.

Dorn Mukirk, who had appeared at first to be empty-handed, reached within his robe and withdrew a bone.
It’s a leg bone,
decided Meralda, with a disgusted frown.
A yellowed human leg bone.

“Now there’s a use for pockets,” muttered Fromarch.

Dorn Mukirk struck a stiff pose, arms and leg bone uplifted, and mouthed a long word. The leg bone took on a glowing golden aura that left a trail in the air when the wizard swung it down level with his waist.

The Alon mages glared at each other, and began to warily circle the room, each brandishing his respective bone and muttering to it. Red Mawb’s skull twitched and jerked. Dorn Mukirk’s leg bone emitted brief tongues of pale, cold flame. Both wizards circled and chanted and, at one point, bumped into each other and broke into a fresh fit of shouting and fist-waving.

Meralda looked away, and bit back a laugh. “I can hardly believe this,” she said. “Bones?”

“The Alons have always been a bit fond of necromancy,” said Shingvere. “Though I thought they’d grown out of it, of late.” He shook his head. “Seems I was wrong.”

Bones,
thought Meralda.
Here, in the twentieth century.

“Will you gentlemen keep an eye on our Alons and their body parts? As amusing as this is, I need to prepare the detector.”
And test my Sight,
Meralda thought, with a tightening of her chest.
I hope I don’t have to do this blind.

Shingvere dragged his chair close to the glass. “Aye, we’ll watch the circus, lass. And if they find the Tears I’ll eat my robes.”

Meralda hurried to her workbench, shedding her long coat as she went. The first real bite of autumn had been in the air this morning, reminding her of just how close the Accords were, and just how little she’d done to move the Tower’s shadow.

“First things first,” she muttered, as she draped her coat over a glassware rack and pulled back her chair. “Won’t be any Accords unless you work, my friend.”

She regarded the detector. She’d had no time to do more than assemble a crude framework from cast off bits of this and remainders from that. Finished, the detector was simply a half globe of copper bands, perhaps a foot across, that held a pair of glass discs mounted midway through the half globe’s shell. The glass discs were a finger’s breadth apart, and a faint bluish haze rode the air between the glasses.

Meralda had mounted a plain wooden broom handle to the edge of the half-globe, and had wrapped the gripping end of the handle with thick copper wire.
All in all,
Meralda decided,
it bears an unfortunate resemblance to a plumber’s toilet plunger.

Meralda took a third glass disc from its stand on her bench, slipped it carefully between the two already mounted to the apparatus, and smiled when she heard a tiny click and felt the binding spell lock the disc in place.

“Skulls and leg bones,” she said, softly. “And me without a single bubbling cauldron.”

Mug laughed, and Meralda reached for her notes.
First, charge the repeater, and prime the latch,
she’d written, just before she’d left for the night.
Then set the illuminator and the polarizing bands.

Simple enough. But her nagging worries about her Sight arose again, and Meralda knew she’d have to try now, before she could concentrate on anything else.
I can see the colors in the glass change without any Sight,
she thought.
But who knows what else I might need to see?

“All right,” she said, taking a deep breath, and closing her eyes. “Sight.”

She reached out, willing into being that peculiar sense of things unseen that always preceded the advent of Sight. She felt it blossom, willed it from within to without, and opened her eyes.

“Sight.”

Her workbench was alight with traceries of fire. The five-tined charge dissipater was bathed in a ragged nimbus of shifting blue. The grounding cable was barely visible through its aura of midnight black. The detector, charged and shaped with only the most subtle of spells, sparkled and shone like a jeweler’s display case lit with a noonday sun.

Meralda smiled, and closed her eyes, and willed back a portion of her Sight.
I’ll keep what I need to finish the detector,
she decided, but save what is left for the safe room.

“Everything all right, Meralda?” asked Fromarch, from his place before the mirror.

“Everything is fine. I’m ready.”

And then she opened her eyes, rubbed her palms together, and caught up a wisp of cold, taut fire.

“Here we are,” said the captain, as he and Meralda and the Bellringers reached the four Alons flanking the doors to the east wing. “Friendly, picturesque Alonya.”

The copperheads glared. One rapped sharply on the door with his knuckles, and a moment later the doors opened and half a dozen Alons spilled out.

Meralda immediately recognized Hermish Draunt, the Alon ambassador to Tirlin. He’d been the Alon ambassador for twelve years, and Meralda knew he was regarded in the court as a reasonable, level-headed man who held the Alon queen’s favor despite being brother to the chief of Clan Fuam, which had dared a blood feud with the queen’s clan a mere two centuries past. Hermish smiled at Meralda and even bowed slightly. As Meralda returned his greeting she saw the other Alons glare.

The others were unknown to her. Each wore the plaid kilt and shoulder sash of his Clan, but to Meralda, every complicated red-and-green plaid looked very much like any other, and the sigils on their buttons were too small to make out at arm’s length. She counted five bearded, scarred, unsmiling faces, and decided introductions by name were neither advisable nor forthcoming.

“Welcome to Alonya, my friends,” said Ambassador Draunt. “The thaumaturge and her attendants may enter freely.”

Beside Meralda, the captain glared. “The thaumaturge, her attendants, and myself, thank you,” he said.

Ambassador Draunt reddened. “Regrettably, Captain, the invitation specified only the Thaumaturge to Tirlin, and her two attendants,” he said. His gaze fell. “No one else.”

“That isn’t what we were told,” said the captain.

“It’s what you’re being told now,” said a gravel voiced Alon, who stepped from behind the ambassador to face the captain. “It is not to be questioned or negotiated. Your thaumaturge, her honor guard, and that’s all. Or nothing.”

Meralda put her hand on the captain’s shoulder.

“The thaumaturge accepts,” she said, and she squeezed when she felt the captain inhale. “How could one refuse such a gracious, gentle-spoken invitation?”

The Alon reddened, and Meralda smiled. “I’ll be back soon,” she said, before anyone could speak. “This really shouldn’t take long.”

And then she steeled her jaw, lifted her chin, and marched straight into the gathered Alons.

At the last possible instant, they stepped aside, though Meralda was certain Ambassador Draunt pulled at least one Alon out of her way.

“Come, gentlemen,” she called out, to the Bellringers. “Let’s not dawdle, and impose too long upon the obvious good nature of our hosts.”

Behind her, she heard the hurry of booted feet and let out a shaky breath.

I’m here in Alonya,
she thought.
Now all I’ve got to do is find the Tears.

As the Alons trotted up behind her, finally sidling past her and splitting up so that three went ahead and three followed behind, Meralda began to sweat and her heart began to pound. The Alons turned, and Meralda followed, and behind her she heard Kervis whisper. “Wish I had the Oldmark,” he said. “What am I going to do with this?”

Meralda knew he referred to the ornamental swords the captain had insisted both Bellringers take.
I should perhaps have left the Bellringers behind with the captain,
she thought.
After all, I’m not likely to be mugged here, even by the Alons.

As the Alons led her through their halls, though, Meralda began to wonder. Her six Alon guides quickly became nine, then a dozen, then sixteen. Every hall they passed or crossed was guarded by or full of soldiers, in full armor.

The Alons about her fell into a thudding marching step, and Meralda had to fight to keep from falling in, herself. The Bellringers, she noted, refused to join in as well. Kervis began whistling a Tirlish marching song which, she recalled, mentioned the Alons in less than flattering terms.

They aren’t afraid,
Meralda realized,
because they are with me.

I wish I was half so confident.

The party halted at a door, voices rose up, and then the door was opened, and Meralda saw past it and realized she was nearly to the safe room. She breathed a sigh of relief, but it caught in her throat as she heard Tervis say, “Now she’ll show you lot a thing or two.”

Before her, the Alons made a path. Standing at the end of it, just beyond the door, were Red Mawb and Dorn Mukirk.

“Good morning,” she said, when it became apparent neither Alon intended to speak. “We haven’t met, formally.”

“I am named Red Mawb, Mage to the Alon Queen,” spat Mawb. Beside him, Dorn Mukirk grimaced.

“As am I,” he said, his round face darkening. “As am I.”

“Oh?” said Meralda. “Your name is Red Mawb, too?”

The rotund wizard spat a curse word, and stepped forward, and as Ambassador Draunt leaped into the space between Meralda and the Alon wizards Meralda struggled to keep her smile intact.

“Please, please,” said the ambassador. “We’re all tired, and perhaps overwrought,” he said. “Let the thaumaturge be about our queen’s business, and perhaps we can lay this…unfortunate matter to rest, at last,” he said, turning and lifting his hands to the mages.” By the order of the queen, as I said.”

Dorn Mukirk mouthed a curse word, but stepped back and away from the door. Mawb followed.

Here I go,
thought Meralda.
Into history. Or into infamy.
Her earlier convictions that the Tears lay within the safe room began to waver. What if it isn’t here? What if all I find is a table and a chair?

Meralda turned. The Alons gathered close at her back.

“Let’s go,” she said. Her voice shook, and she heard it, and she clenched her jaw and stepped forward. The Bellringers followed, and an Alon threw open the safe room door and stepped aside.

The room was dark, and Meralda halted at the threshold. “Guardsman Tervis,” she said, softly. “My bag.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Tervis, rushing to her side and opening the bag.

Meralda reached inside. She nearly reached for her magelamp, but decided the detector and it glowing discs would be easier to see in the darkened room.

A shuffling of feet broke out behind her, and she turned to see Kervis shoving Red Mawb back with his shoulder.

“Make way,” snarled the wizard, to Kervis. “Make way, or I’ll—”

“Or you’ll what?” snapped Meralda, surprised at the steadiness in her voice. She turned to face the Alon wizard. “Are you making threats upon the person of a Tirlish guard in the palace of the king of Tirlin?”

Hushed voices rose, and hands grasped the wizard’s shoulder, and dragged him back.

“I thought not,” said Meralda. “Only myself and my attendants are to enter this room while I work,” she said. “That was the agreement. It is subject to neither discussion nor negotiation.” The Alons glared, hands on hilts, mouths set in mid-curse.

“I’ve had enough of this,” she said. “Anyone who wishes to argue may do so with a ward spell. You are familiar with ward spells, are you not?”

Then she lifted her arms, muttered a nonsense word, and brought her hands together with a clap.

The Alons surged back, away from the door. Even Kervis gritted his teeth and flinched at the sound, though he winked an instant later.

Meralda grinned and turned her back to the Alons.

Now find the Tears,
she thought.
If they’re here at all.
She wiped sweat from her forehead, reached into her bag, and found the detector’s wire-wrapped handle. She drew it carefully forth, raised the copper basket to the level of her eyes, and spoke the last half of the long word that would mesh and engage the two dozen spells tied to the glass and copper.